A Chaos Map Based Reconfiguration of Solar Array to Mitigate the Effects of Partial Shading

Consistent distribution of shadows on the surface of the shaded PV array enhances the array’s harvested capacity. Therefore, in this paper, an Image processing inspired Chaos Map reconfiguration is proposed to mitigate the effect of shading. The proposed reconfiguration is aimed at achieving uniform row current when compared with the other conventional configurations with physical relocation of panels without changing the electrical connections. The efficacy of the proposed method is tested on Short Wide, Short Narrow, Long Wide and Long Narrow shading conditions on the basis of both software and hardware results. The proposed method enhanced output metrics under partially shaded conditions and gives most effective dispersion of shading over entire PV array. This proposed method is also compared with other existing static reconfiguration techniques for the above said shading conditions and the results show tremendous increment in output power under both hardware and software platforms. The results replicate that the proposed configuration can be generalized for any size of an SPV Array and output parameters can be enhanced by physical relocation under any sort of shading conditions.